“Coventina!”
She didn’t turn around when her father shouted her name, but she was trembling. She thought of Little Man’s reputation as a ruthless moneylender, as someone whose threats could have deadly consequences. Covey’s hands were still shaking as she pulled open the door of the wardrobe in her bedroom, as she tried to pull up the zipper of the dress she’d chosen.
Covey wanted to slip out of the house but if she did so, it could mean big trouble for her father. If she even said the wrong thing to Little Man, it could mean trouble. Later, she kept these thoughts firmly pinned to the front of her head as she showed Little Man Henry into the front room and he leaned back against the settee, closing his fingers around a tamarind ball.
“Delicious, Coventina,” Little Man said, settling his gaze in the dip below her collarbone before sliding it down past her waist. “You’re turning out to be quite an accomplished young lady, in addition to being very beautiful.”
Coventina bit into a tamarind ball to camouflage the expression that she knew must be crossing her face right then. She thought of her mother, who surely would not have hidden her disdain. No, her mummy would have put her hands on her hips and cut her eyes so sharply at Little Man that he would have stood up and slinked toward the front door, as her pa had on more than one occasion. But her mother was not here. Just when Covey needed her most.
Covey thought of the knives that Pearl kept in a lower drawer of the kitchen, the biggest, sharpest ones reserved for cleaving meat and stripping sugar cane. One day, she would regret not having kept one of those knives with her.
The Price
Lin wasn’t sure at what point, exactly, his destiny had put him on the path toward Little Man. He was already in trouble when the first rumblings of that anti-Chinese fuss caused the fire at one of his shops. When the cockfights weren’t going so well, Lin had wagered goods from his store, figuring he’d win back the value, but his debts kept accumulating.
Things got worse when his woman left him and, still, he made sure their child never went without new school uniforms, which she outgrew at a nerve-racking pace. On this much Lin and Mathilda had always agreed. Covey was going to get a good education, never mind that she was a girl.
In the end, Lin’s finances were so bad that he’d had to turn to Little Man Henry. Lin should have known better. He should have known it was only a matter of time before Little Man would come to extract his price. Because as far as Lin had been able to observe, that was what most men in this world were about, the price you were expected to pay. And the person who would suffer the most would be his daughter, the only thing of value that he had left. Because the day was fast approaching when Lin would have to ask himself, What are you willing to do?
Covey
The Wailers were all over the radio that spring, and a bit of dance music could go a long way to making Covey feel better, even in times like these. Pearl had left for the day and Covey turned up the radio and shuffled to the music, holding her hair off her neck to cool her damp skin. Her back was turned to the kitchen door when Little Man walked into the house.
Since the fire, her father had warned her more than once to lock the front door when she was on her own, but Little Man had used the back way. Pearl must have left the gate open on her way out. And Little Man walked in without so much as rapping on the doorjamb.
Little Man had been showing up every Sunday for several weeks now, and during that time, her father’s fire-damaged shop had been fully refurbished. The connection between the two seemed evident to Covey. All the more alarming because her father hinted that Little Man was interested in what he called a closer relationship with Covey.
Whenever her pa raised the subject of Little Man, Covey would walk out of the room. Her pa would come to his senses, she thought, and surely, Little Man would come to realize that it was a preposterous idea to spend time with her. Yet here he was, all the same, walking unannounced into her family’s kitchen at the height of a weekday afternoon, like he owned the place.
“The Wailers,” Little Man said. “Good tune.”
“My father is not here,” Covey said.
“I know,” Little Man said. “That’s why I’m here.” He stepped toward Covey. “Aren’t you glad that I’m here?”
Covey held her breath. Little Man was now close enough for her to smell his too-sweet aftershave. Little Man was now close enough for her to feel his breath on her forehead.
“We could get to know each other a little better,” Little Man said. He tried to kiss Covey but she turned her face to the side. When Little Man leaned in again, she pushed him away but this time, he grabbed her wrists and held them back against the wall, his grip so tight that she thought her bones might snap under the pressure. At school, Covey had learned about a kind of toad in Asia that could twist itself up and make itself look dead, to ward off its predators. She held still and focused her mind on that one thing now, the toad’s red underbelly exposed, its fiery surface crisscrossed by black markings, its body filled with venom, just in case.